hat’s the plan?” Daniel whispered to me as we were escorted onto the Jolly Roger.

“Rescue SJ, get off the ship, and feed Hook’s other hand to a crocodile if there’s time.”

“I meant a plan for how to do that.”

The ship swayed lightly beneath my feet. “I’m still working on that part.”

We’d had to surrender to Hook in order to keep him from slitting SJ’s throat. Now our hands were bound and we were being taken aboard his ship as prisoners, which he seemed to be enjoying. Us, less so.

“Toss these protagonists in the brig,” Hook ordered. “When we get far enough from shore, we’ll feed them to the beast.”

We were led single file through a trap door and a narrow set of stairs. The atmosphere below deck was shadowy and damp. There were four dark cells—two on each side with a small walkway between them. The five of us were shoved into the first cell on the right and bolted inside.

The pirates had confiscated all our stuff, including our backpacks and my friends’ weapons. Luckily, my disguised wandpin had been safe from the reaping. Once the pirates had left, I jimmied my bound hands up to grasp it, then I morphed the wandpin into a knife, which we all used to cut the ropes restraining us.

“Well, this is just great. You had to go and get captured, didn’t you, SJ?” Blue groaned as she sat on the wooden bench inside the cell. She kicked aside a dead rat carcass like it was nothing then started carving her initials into the side of the boat with the one throwing knife she’d managed to slip into her boot before her utility belt was confiscated.

SJ looked peeved. Then the boat lurched forward. We’d set sail.

“Look, what’s done is done,” I said. “Let’s focus on getting out of here.”

“The only way out of here is through the digestive tract of a crocodile.”

We hadn’t noticed the man sitting in the far corner of the adjacent cell. He had matted blond hair, a dusty black blazer, and navy pants. He leaned against the wall next to the bars.

“That’s if you’re a storyteller, anyway,” he continued. “If you’re a kid, then he’s probably going to throw you overboard point blank. So, which of the two are you?”

“The latter,” Jason replied. “But I’m pretty sure we got tossed in here for being protagonists.”

This got the scruffy man’s attention. “Protagonists!” He moved closer and clutched the bars of his cell. “Finally, some inspiration! You know, the only character I’ve talked to in the last couple of days was a lame antagonist from some realm called Book. And he wasn’t even interesting. All I ever got out of him before Hook killed him was that he’d found some lead in his search for a woman named Paige.”

My eyebrows shot up. “I don’t suppose you mean Paige Tomkins?”

“Yeah, yeah, that was it. Anyway, I’m glad to have some interesting characters to talk to. So how ’bout it guys? Where are you from? Who are you? What’s your story?”

“Who we are doesn’t matter,” Jason said earnestly. “Who was this antagonist? What did he say about Paige’s location?”

“You answer my questions first,” the man replied. “I’ve been down here since Hook found out my studio wanted to do a musical adaptation of Peter Pan that involved the Hook character performing a tap number. The guy had a fit, stole my storyteller visa and Hole Tracker, and locked me in here. The only reason I haven’t been fed to the croc like the two producers I was travelling with is that I agreed to work on a manuscript painting him as a swashbuckling hero.

“But that manuscript will never sell in Hollywood, and if I get out of here someday, I’d like to at least have something of production value to take back to Paramount. So tell me your story and I’ll tell you mine. If you wanna find out where this Paige is, give me the scoop.” He pointed at SJ through the bars. “Starting with you.”

SJ furrowed her brow. “The manager at the tavern told us not to speak to storytellers. He said that doing so could have repercussions on other realms.”

“SJ, he has a lead about where Paige is. We need whatever information he’s got,” Jason insisted. “It’s not like we could get tossed in jail for it. We’re already in one.”

“All right, all right,” SJ sighed. She uncrossed her arms. “My name is SJ Kaplan. I am the daughter of Snow White and Prince Edward, future queen of the land of Dobb, and apparently a helpless damsel in distress that got captured by the bad guys in the last scene.” She shot a glare at Blue.

“Daughter of Snow White?” the writer repeated. “Pass. Snow White stories are going to saturate the market in a few years. A friend of mine has a dark-vibe screenplay he wants to sell to Universal Pictures where he envisions a big star like Charlize Theron playing the wicked queen. And these two guys I know at ABC are planning a TV show where the main character is the daughter of Snow White. She’s going to be a badass with a red leather jacket. Sorry, kid, you’re just not original enough.” He rubbed his chin and turned to me. “Now you’ve got a distinct look about you—bright eyes, brave face. Tell me your story.”

SJ clenched her fists. For a second I thought she might shoot laser beams out of her eyes. What I was less certain of, though, was whether she would aim them at the writer or at me.

“Um, pass,” I said. “You don’t want to hear about me. My story’s too complicated.”

“So I’ll trim the word count on the manuscript. Come on. Give me something and I’ll tell you what you wanna know.”

I looked at SJ. From the expression on her face, she was probably wishing that she had a portable potion to fire right now. Nevertheless, she exhaled irritably and gestured from me to the writer. “Go ahead.”

“All right . . . fine,” I agreed reluctantly as I turned toward the writer. “But you don’t know what you’re getting into.”

“Which makes it all the more intriguing.”

“I’m only giving you the short version and I’m only saying it once, so pay attention,” I told him flatly. “My name is Crisanta Knight. My mother is Cinderella. My brother is a back-stabbing traitor. A whole lot of people out there want to kill me. And I’ve got magical powers. There. Satisfied?”

“Hold on, hold on,” the writer said as he scribbled in a notebook that he’d pulled from his pocket. “What was that last part? Did you say you have magical powers?”

“Yup.”

“Can you show me?”

“Nope.”

“Why not?”

I shrugged. “They’re all dried up right now. I kind of used them too much yesterday and they need time to reboot.”

The writer grinned ear-to-ear at his scribbles. “See,” he said addressing SJ, but pointing at me with his pen. “That’s what I call an innovative protagonist.”

Really, man? I’m already in the doghouse with SJ. Could you make things any worse?

I ignored SJ’s furious face and wheeled back to the writer. “It’s your turn now. I gave you what you wanted. What do you know about Paige?”

“Fair enough.” The writer shrugged. “I think I can work with what you’ve told me. So anyway, this antagonist told me that he’d found proof that this woman he was looking for—Paige Tomkins—wasn’t in Neverland. She was in another realm.”

“Which one?” Daniel asked.

“Oz.”

My friends and I exchanged a look. I hurriedly turned on my Hole Tracker, which thankfully the pirates hadn’t thought to confiscate. The holographic map now displayed a blobby image of an island labeled “Neverland” at the top. A little dot highlighted our offshore location, but there was no sign of a hole opening anywhere on the island. I passed my index finger in a circular motion around the face of the Hole Tracker to scroll the time settings forward until I found the next wormhole.

“There,” I said, pointing at the silvery circle. “The next portal opens tomorrow at five past ten in the morning.”

“I guess your hunch about coming here first was spot on,” Jason said to me. “Finding this writer guy is the ultimate clue.”

I furrowed my brow. He was right. The writer had just given us a very distinct plan for how to proceed. But I couldn’t help but feel like there was more to it than that. Had the old man in my dream really only wanted us to come here to find this writer, or was there another reason?

Blue pivoted to the writer. “Did this antagonist say if he’d told anybody else about—”

Blue cut herself off at the sound of the trap door swinging open. I turned off my Hole Tracker and morphed my wand back to its clandestine wandpin state—much to the awe of our writer cellmate—then clutched it tightly in the palm of my hand. Three dirty-looking pirates arrived at our cell and went to work unlatching its many bolts.

“The captain wants the girl with the combat boots, the girl with the blue cape, and the blond boy up on deck,” snarled the lead pirate.

Crud. I hadn’t had time to hatch an escape plan. Without our weapons, the odds were rough. The only thing I knew for certain was that my wand could be used in one of its unbreakable forms to slice through the locks outside our cell. But our time was up before I’d thought of what we should do after that. Now I had to make a decision.

I could keep my weapon for my own personal protection and hope to the heavens that I would find a way back down here to free Daniel and SJ. Or I could leave the wand with them and trust that they would find a way to save us once they’d escaped.

The latter was definitely a smarter way to go, but I didn’t know if I wanted to trust Daniel or SJ with my wand. They had both hurt me deeply and pushed me away, and my wand wasn’t just my prized possession; it was an extension of myself.

Nevertheless, I realized that the issues between us were personal problems, the kind we’d all agreed to put aside so we could work together on our mission. And we could definitely do that. The attack on my home this afternoon was the perfect example. We’d barely been reunited an hour and SJ and Daniel hadn’t hesitated to jump into battle with me. Our natural pull toward teamwork and fighting the bigger enemy made us strong. Obviously some instincts—protecting your friends most of all—surpassed personal feuds.

As our cell door was unlatched, I backed up a few steps so that I was standing directly in front of Daniel. Exhaling deeply, I moved my wandpin behind my back.

Lapellius.

Knife.

Once I felt the leather grip of the knife solidify in my hand, I subtly passed it to Daniel. His warm hand brushed mine as the weapon went from my possession to his. I craned my neck to see him tuck it inside his jacket as our cell door clanged open.

“Come on, let’s go,” the lead pirate beckoned.

“Why just the three of us?” Jason asked as we were herded out.

“Simple,” the second pirate responded. “Combat boots defied him, blue cape started the fight back at the tavern, and you headbutted his first mate. The captain is thinking of keeping your other two friends as unpaid deck hands.”

“Over our dead bodies,” Daniel scoffed as he and SJ were locked back inside the cell.

“Don’t worry, kid,” the lead pirate called back. “That’s always Plan B.”

As we were led away, I glanced at Daniel. I knew he couldn’t hear my thoughts, but he still knew how to read the emotion in my eyes. Please don’t let me down, I implored.